The Tak Team Blog

Do you ever wish you could send people close to you the same tasty cookies your grannie made when you were little? Cheryl and Co can make this wish come true. It does not matter where in the US the recipient lives, they deliver a huge selection of bakery goods straight from the oven. Every last one of their extraordinary gift boxes, baskets, or brilliantly colored tins is exquisitely wrapped and is sent straight to your loved one’s home. It is a comforting and convenient means to cheer up your friends, family, clients, and business contacts.

The first bakery opened for trade in Columbus, Ohio in nineteen eighty one. Just 7 years later they had eminently extended their product range. Soon afterwards they began selling through catalogs and retail outlets and a corporate gift section to improve the service offered to businesses. The company made use of the internet to facilitate easy ordering and are now a member of the 1800Flowers.com brand.

The quality of their products and ingredients is the cookie provider’s main priority. Every last order is shipped promptly to make sure it is received at the peak of freshness. Each item made by Cheryl & Company is free from unnatural colorings and flavors. Triple chocolate, snickerdoodles, oatmeal, and cookies with buttercream icing in almost any color are available as well as a range of specialty recipes, like honey apple pecan. Your most difficult part is choosing what to send.

Quite as fine as their tasty baked items are the beautiful boxes they come in. If time is an issue, lots of pre-selected gift baskets are provided on the internet site. Or else, simply pick out an arrangement and then choose the recipient’s preferred treats. The brownies are available in a large range of varieties, and also include tiny taster sizes.

Gourmet cookies and brownies in a formal presentation tin are the ideal thank you for business associates. A playful or seasonal cookie selection is a terrific gift to let friends know they are missed. Of course, for Xmas and other high days and holidays, they have especially made choices just for the occasion. Considering the extraordinary range of bakery items on offer and the large variety of ways to pack your selection of epicurean treats, you’re bound to find something awesome for everybody!

All it needs is a look at the numbers to realize the place popcorn holds in America’s perceptions. A staggering one billion pounds of unprepared kernels were sold over the counters of domestic retailers in 2000 alone. You can purchase yours from the market leader - selling over of a million pounds each year to lovers of gourmet popcorn. All their products are even certified kosher.

Since 1979, the firm has furnished the country with this toothsome foodstuff in many beautiful packages. To guarantee perfection they first choose the finest, tastiest grain from America. With corn oil, that taste’s kept while you pop the kernels, permitting other flavorings to be added. It’s then packed up and shipped out right away - to make sure it stays fresh.

Have you ever wanted a six gallon tin, entirely filled with popcorn? They are ready for you. So if you’ve a company event that wants snacks providing - or merely want to stock up enough to last through the next few movie nights - you know where to come. You can order them in plain and buttered not to mention numerous other flavors like white chocolate raspberry. If these are too much, or if you happen to be considering something different, you can get hold of their toothsome treats in decorative tins and boxes. These arrive decorated with your preferred theme like “thank you”, birthdays, Christmas, a favorite sports team, etc. And there are other personalization choices - an amusing image, the recipient’s name, or a witty message.

There are people who know their preference and choose to merely purchase a single large tin. However, assortments contain lesser amounts of different flavors so you have a chance to try them all.

If you want to order more than a small measure of assorted flavors, then towers are the best way to go. And while they offer predesigned towers, one can also select the contents of each box in a given tower.

You can purchase popcorn in effectively any flavor you might want from them. Owing to their appearance they make great presents. I’m confident that you can already see the gift-giving possibilities.

Cheryl and Co can warm the hearts of your friends and family with tasty cookies. Regardless of where in the United States the recipient lives, they deliver a huge range of bakery items fresh from the oven. Every box is exquisitely presented and sent right to your loved one’s address with each and every cookie in perfect condition. What better means to please your family, or your work contacts?

The original bakehouse was opened in Ohio in nineteen eighty-one. And, just seven years later, they had developed the business to include various puddings and other epicurean gifts. Soon the cookie supplier was marketing its goods in retail outlets, and then opened a section especially for corporate clients. The company took advantage of the internet revolution to better assist the public and are now part of the 1800Flowers.com brand. Conserving the superior quality of their legendary recipes is the cookie provider’s first priority. Every order is shipped promptly to ensure it arrives in perfect condition.

All the cookies are preservative and additive free. Flavors include traditional goodies like snickerdoodles and oatmeal raisin, and a few unique flavor combos, too. The hardest task will actually be not ordering their entire stock all at once. The choice is not limited to cookies because brownies and luxury chocolate are available too. You can take your pick of towers, boxes, or tins full of carefully chosen types of cookies, brownies and chocolates. When you have a little more time, you can go for a gift box or tin and cram it with the varieties of your choice. If you go to the brownie shop on the internet you’ll find that the selection includes iced, nut and sugar-free varieties.

Tasty cookies and brownies in an upmarket presentation tin make the ideal gift for colleagues. A playful or seasonal basket is a fantastic present to let friends know they are missed. Of course, when it comes to holidays and special occasions, they provide especially designed choices with an appropriate theme. It does not matter whether you want to give your partner a valentine’s gift to remember, to show your appreciation or you need to show someone special you are thinking of them, Cheryl and Company have something that will brighten up their day.

A Gluten free diet is extremely suggestable for those human beings who could be genetically predisposed to suffer from dermatitis herpetiformis or Coeliac disease. This affliction is a stomach acid disorder caused due to a extreme sensitivity to glutenous foods. Many people decide to rely on gluten-free diet for various other causes. Glutenous food is for the most part a combination of huge amounts of protein that is overwhelming high in wheat cereals, particularly that contain wheat. Gliadin is a big chemical which may be present in gluten-rich foods that may be a major contributor and the lead mixture purported to cause coeliac disease and other similar afflictions. With this stomach disease is an abnormal immunological response in the major systems of the human body. The extremely painful condition was initially associated as an enzyme problem.

Gluten-free dieting habits are also thought to be in line with people who abstain from animal based products. This diet should also be considered the lifestyle for the great majority who may be afflicted with diseases induced by diets high in gluten, like Coeliac disease. It should also be noted those people who are pained from neural confusion, elbow pain, lack of the ability to balance, auto-immunity or many different brain disorders very well may also get a benefit from low gluten dietary consideration. A great majority of these disorders have also been correlated to eating a lot of glutenous foods.

Gluten free feeding habits is assembled in such a way that it for the most part completely removes foods that have the ingredients of barley and oats. Products containing these grains aren’t healthy for those suffering from these sort of afflictions. Human-beings on a glutenless diet ideally should completely avoid diet components like cereal and beer.

Individuals suffering with coeliac afflictions are commanded to replace a dietary selection of glutenless components in their diet. Lately gluten-free pasta and beer are easy to find in a wide variety of health food stores. Clean fruits and veggies may be eaten as they are absolutely low gluten. Humans should also consider having rices, potato-based products, and foods containing soy instead of wheat-based flour. Gluten free dietary consideration with a great mouth-feel is easily available these days and it may very well make a great effect in the lives of human beings suffering from with these sort of viruses.

Don’t have a steady for Valentine’s? Forget sitting home alone in your PJs. Assemble your other separated friends (and their uncommitted acquaintances) and make a singles party for a night of juicy fun. Do not know where to start? Do not fret, we have got you covered with points to help you make the perfect un-Valentine’s Day celebration –and possibly meet someone new. Make Valentine’s Day fabulous for everyone by planning a occasion with flirty activities and risque-themed nightstand places. Think spin the bottle and chocolate fudge body paint to complete this sizzling soiree and put guests in the mode for amore, and perhaps something a little bit more.
Invites are at the center of these Valentines Day ideas. Send out invites and assure singles acquaintances to “dare to be dateless.” Demand them to take in other single acquaintances, but make sure you have an match amount of men and women to step-up the flirt factor. Keep things easy with online requests. Customise your invites to supply a individualized touch as well as track your RSVPs easy! Encourage allies to contribute their own iPods and playlists and have turns doing DJ. Make sure the music is playful and cheerful (but mix it up with a potpourri of genres) to hold the dance floor inhabited. Spark conversation with conversational heart cookies. These cookies will take you back to elementary school Valentine’s Day Parties where an innocent crush was conveyed with petite candy conversation hearts. Give guests a biscuit heart right when they walk through the doorway to warm their spirit with warm memories.

Valentine’s Day cards have been around in some form or another since the 15th century. The holiday’s love letters that we exchange today have roots in the 18th century as fancy paper designed with flowers and hearts. People wrote their own messages or they looked to a little book called the Valentine Writer for an inspirational verse. A written passage expressing love on Valentine’s Day is one of the most sentimental and provocative gifts you can give. What started as a hand-written note expressing, “I love you,” has turned into an loving conglomerate, but perhaps a touch impersonal for your sweetheart. Entice a paramour by writing a classic poem as a personal message in your Valentine’s Day card. Better yet, make your own!

You have only to glance at hard numbers to know the place popcorn holds in the nation’s tastes. More than 1 billion pounds of unpopped kernels were sold across the tills of domestic vendors in 2000 alone. Consequently, over 1.000.000 pounds come from the Popcorn Factory, ready prepared as tins of popcorn, popcorn balls, popcorn favors and gourmet popcorn, yearly. It’s even certified kosher.

As they have thirty years of experience, you can give them your order with confidence, no matter which mix you crave. It takes the best ingredients to cook the best popcorn, so they search through domestically grown kernels to find the very best. Following that, corn oil pops the kernels allowing the flavorings to infuse directly into the flesh of the popcorn. They then seal it up and ship it out right away — so that it stays fresh.

Their product line with the widest reputation is easily the tins of popcorn provided in either 2.5 or 6 gallon sizes. So if you have a company event to provide snacks for — or simply want to stock up enough to last through movie night for a few weeks — you know what to order. You’d expect the buttered and plain varieties, but some of the other flavors might be new to you. But if that’s not your thing, they also offer different possibilities; most popularly the beautiful boxes. Designed to say “thank you”, to celebrate any special occasion, or to send a message, they’re tailor-made to be gifts. The Factory offers extra customization options — an amusing image, the recipient’s name, even a special note.

Some people know their preference and as a result simply buy a sizable pack of it. People with wider interests might investigate the assortments available.

Alternatively, if you need a larger variety, you have a solution — the tower. Consisting of a number of packs loaded atop the others and secured, you may order them as particular arrangements or you can instead mix and match to your tastes.

You can have popcorn delivered in almost any flavor you’re likely to want from the Popcorn Factory. Their customizable and beautiful themed packages really help to bring a smile to their recipient’s face. Can you think of anyone who’d like a tower? We greatly recommend it.

The cocktail party is a spotlight of the holiday season, and sometimes it seems like everyone is holding one. With so many invites, how do you ensure your event is one individuals desire to attend and still talk about next year? You require to impress guests with a modern holiday cocktail celebration where all is dark and shimmering.

Host an open house occasion. This is a fantastic season for occasion parties. Hosting an open house for the whole family may cut down on costs and time. If adults and youngsters will both attend the fete, make certain to have a couple of those fabulous activities made for the kids and run by helpers during your celebration. Host a tree trimming fete. The big activity will be adorning the tree and your household with your ornamentations. If you have tiny trees that require trimming, this is idyllic. Serve hot chocolate and cookies, not a heavy meal. Do not agenda your holiday fete round a meal time. Say no to the goody bags at your occasion celebration. Keep guests entertained with creative holiday party games. Allow a craft or a embellished cookie that the kids make and adorn function as a take-home party favour.
For a Ho Ho Ho and a Ha Ha Ha charming time, host a White Elephant Gift Party. A White Elephant Gift Swap is a perfect party game for a Christmas or holiday fete at home or your office.Traditionally, a “White Elephant” is something resting around the house that you haven’t had time to set up — like a Gingerbread House Kit that somebody gave you as a gift. My reading of the White Elephant Occasion Gift is that the gifts can be outlandish, amusing and even multipurpose.

Spending time with kin is an important part of the Thanksgiving occasion. When you’re not making a flavorful meal or sitting around the table, why not do activities tykes and grownups can savour together? From Thanksgiving skits that little ones can perform to a Turkey Day touch football to merriment with food, there are a number of actions that will keep everyone entertained and interested with the celebrations. With all of the thoughts we give, there’s surely to be a game or activity for everyone to savor and like family activity night with a Thanksgiving curve, these actions we share with you boost interaction and bonding.

A foodie meal is not a requirement for a successful Thanksgiving dinner party and we have all the Thanksgiving ideas that you will need to remain on budget and still serve up a charming banquet! To keep your prices down, but still keep family and friends content, include established occasion dishes such as pumpkin pie on your carte du jour. Standard recipes that you are already familiar with and that feature seasonal ingredients put them among the most cost-effective recipes to make. Moreover, traditional recipes can be simpler, making it is better to add your own great touches using spices and things you already have. Thanksgiving is all about households and their customs, so recipes taken from past meals are constantly sure to win crowd blessings year after year.
Don’t forget to involve household and friends in planning of the evening. Everyone is conscious of how stringent hosting this occasion meal can be, so they will want to help out in any way they can. Thanksgiving is about kin getting together and all members love having a part in the success of the evening.

More than likely you have a few family formulas, but even if you do not there are scores of ideas on how to reuse your remnants. Whether you still have family in town or are just waiting for a remarkable meal post-shopping flings, preparing a day after Thanksgiving brunch or luncheon is a delicious way to make the most of those turkey day remnants.

A couple of years ago, I visited an organic vegetable farm in southeast Minnesota, not far from the Mississippi River. Nestled in a valley that sloped down from rolling pasture and cropland sat Featherstone Fruits and Vegetables, a 40-acre farm.

Featherstone was part of a local food web in the upper Midwest, selling at a farmers’ market, through a CSA (community supported agriculture) and to co-op stores in the Twin Cities. But the partners, Jack Hedin and Rhys Williams, who began in 1995, were having a tough time economically and realized they would have to boost sales if they were to become viable. The farm earned about $22,000 a year — split between the two partners — so they had to take on debt to keep going; this, after a 60 to 70 hour work week.

Hedin told me he made some calls and eventually landed a deal with Whole Foods to supply the natural foods chain with organic heirloom tomatoes. When I visited, they were in year two of the contract, picking the tomatoes before their peak ripeness, then shipping them to Chicago for stores in the Midwest. The deal had become the biggest sales channel for their farm; while still “local,” they were not as local as when they sold in their backyard.

There was a lesson here, one that often gets lost in the debate about which is better, local or organic? Too often this is understood as a zero sum game — that the money you spend on organic food at the supermarket will mean less for local farmers. After all, the food you buy is being shipped from who knows where and then often ends up in a processed food product. I’ve heard the argument that if all the money spent on organic food (around $14 billion) were actually channeled to local food, then a lot more small farms would survive and local food networks could expand. Well, Featherstone was doing precisely the opposite: it had entered the organic wholesale marketplace and then sent its tomatoes hundreds of miles away to survive as a small and, yes, local farm.

As consumers, it’s hard to understand these realities since we’re so divorced from the way food is produced. Even for conscious consumers who think about values other than convenience and price — avoiding pesticides, the survival of small farms, artisan food, and, of course, the most basic values, freshness and taste — choices must be made. Should we avoid pesticides at all costs or help small local farmers who may use them? Should we reduce food shipment miles, or buy food produced in an ecologically sound manner regardless of where it’s grown? These questions arise because we want to do what’s right.

The problem, though, is that these questions set up false choices. What Hedin and others showed me was that when it comes to doing the right thing, what really mattered was thinking about the choice — to be aware, to stay informed, and to be conscious of our role as consumers. But what you actually chose — local or organic — didn’t really matter.

Hedin, for example, was competing against farmers he actually knew on the West Coast, who also supplied organic produce to Whole Foods. I met one, Tim Mueller of River Dog Farm, in the one-bar town of Guinda, California. His farm sold produce at the Berkeley Farmers Market about 90 minutes away, but he was also tied to wholesale markets. (I saw River Dog’s heirloom tomatoes in western Massachusetts.) For these organic farmers, selling wholesale was a foundation for economic sustainability.

Moreover, by expanding the organic market, we may be actually helping local farmers. The USDA surveyed farmers’ markets and found that about a third of farmers selling direct were organic — local and organic, that is. In comparison, just one percent of all American farms practice organic agriculture. So for smaller-scale farmers selling direct, organic food has become a key component of their identity. By bringing more people into the organic fold, through whatever gateway they happened to choose, the pool of consumers considering local food would likely increase too.

That’s at least what Jim Crawford, a farmer from south central Pennsylvania believed. His 25-acre operation, New Morning Farm, works two farmers’ markets in Washington, D.C., and Jim played a key role in the growth of local foods in the region, having started out as an organic farmer in the 1970s. He told me he worried when Whole Foods opened a supermarket near his farmers’ market location in Washington because he thought he would lose customers. But over time, he noticed, sales kept rising. He thought the supermarket, which stocked a lot of organic produce from California, was actually converting customers to organic food and they in turn were finding their way to his market.

But what about companies that have pursued the organic marketplace without any concern for local food? What about, say, Earthbound Farm, which has grown into the third largest organic brand and the largest organic produce company in the nation, with its bagged salad mixes in three-quarters of all supermarkets? The company fiercely competed with other organic growers who later went out of business; its salad was grown organically but with industrial-scale agriculture; and the trucks that shipped the salad around the country burned through a lot of fossil fuel.

But Earthbound was competing with the likes of Dole, Fresh Express and ReadyPac in the mainstream market to offer consumers an organic choice. It did little for local food (a saving grace, since it left the market to smaller players). But Earthbound farmed on 26,000 acres of certified organic land, which meant that 267,000 pounds of pesticides and 8.4 million pounds of chemical fertilizers were being removed from use annually, the company estimated. And as studies repeatedly show, organic farming also saves energy (since the production of fertilizer and pesticides consumes one-third of the energy used in farming overall). Earthbound’s accomplishments should not be ignored — even if they are anything but local.

Which brings me to a final point: How we shop. Venues like Whole Foods are not fully organic because people are often unwilling to spend more than a small portion of their grocery budget on organic foods. It’s too expensive. This is one reason why organic food accounts for just two percent of food sales — one percent if you include eating out. Similarly, local foods, though important, total 1-2 percent. So arguing over local or organic is a bit like two people in a room of 100 fighting over who has the more righteous alternative to what the other 98 people are doing. It doesn’t really matter, because the bigger issue is swaying the majority.

When I shop, visiting the Dupont Circle farmers market in Washington, D.C., on Sunday morning and then going to the supermarket, I make choices. I buy local, organic, and conventional foods too, because each meets a need. Is the local product “better” than the organic one? No. Both are good choices because they move the food market in a small way. In choosing them, I can insert my values into an equation that for too long has been determined only by volume, convenience and price. While I have nothing against low prices and convenient shopping, the blind pursuit of these two values can wreak a lot of damage — damage that we ultimately pay for in water pollution, toxic pesticide exposure, livestock health, the quality of food and the loss of small farms. The total bill may not show up at the cash register but it’s one we pay nonetheless.

So what’s my advice? Think about what you’re buying. If you want local food, buy local. If you want organic, buy organic. The point is to make a conscious choice, because as we insert our values into the market, businesses respond and things change. There’s power in what we do collectively, so is there any reason to limit it unnecessarily?

© Samuel Fromartz 2006, reprinted by permission

Author
Samuel Fromartz is a business journalist who has written for Fortune, Business Week, and Inc. Organic Inc. is his first book. He lives in Washington, D.C.

For more information, please visit www.fromartz.com

South of the Mason Dixon line, black eyed peas have simmered on
stoves for decades and are served at the midnight hour on New
Year’s Eve along with the chilled champagne, mixed drinks, and
the beer. Dried, frozen or canned, they have been traditionally
cooked with either ham hocks, ham chunks, or bacon and whatever
other ingredients the home cook adds to them. For the carb and
the cholesterol conscious, turkey bacon or turkey ham is used as
well as a light cooking oil. For the sugar restrictive, a sugar-
free product is substituted. For the eggless, a commerical egg
product is used. For the salt-free, a light salt is used.

Dried Black Eyed Peas

1-lb. dried black eyed peas, rinsed in a colinder
1-ham hock, or a few chunks of ham
1/2-cup onion, chopped
2-cloves garlic, finely chopped
Enough water to cover the peas
1-small can stewed tomatoes, pureed
1-whole jalapeno, rinsed
Salt and pepper to taste

Directions: Into a large bowl:Add the dried black eyed peas
and cover them with cold water soaking them overnight. In a skillet: Add a tablespoon of cooking oil and cook the ham until
it is halfway done. Saute the onion and the garlic. Season with
the salt and the pepper.Add the black eyed peas with the water
that they were soaked in and cover them with some more water.
Bring the ingredients to a boil for ten minutes. Turn the heat
down to medium-low. After the black eyed peas are almost
finished cooking add the pureed tomatoes and the whole jalapeno.
Adjust the seasonings. Cook until the peas are done. Serve with
slices of corn bread and butter.

Corn Bread

1-cup flour
1-cup yellow corn meal
1/4-cup sugar
1-Tlb. baking powder
1-tsp. salt
1/4-cup cooking oil
1-egg
1-cup milk, or buttermilk

Directions: Combine the flour, the corn meal, the sugar, the
baking powder, and the salt. Add the liquid ingredients and
combine them with a wooden spoon. Oil an eight-inch rectangular
baking or a round cast iron skillet adding the corn bread batter. Bake at three hundred and fifty degrees for forty-five
minutes.

Black eyed peas were originally cultivated in Asia, India and
Africa. They were brought to the West Indies and the Southern
states in America by slaves. The peas stand for coins and
prosperity. They are a rich source of Calcium, Folate and Vitamin A.

Frozen black eyed peas are usually found in the freezer section
of the grocery store. Bacon is usually used instead of ham for
a better flavor.

Frozen Black Eyed Peas
2-slices bacon, cut into halves
1/2-cup onion, chopped
2-cloves garlic, finely chopped
1-16-oz bag black eyed peas
1/4-tsp. sugar
Salt and pepper

Directions: In a large pot: Cook the bacon until it is almost
done. Saute the chopped onion and the garlic. Add the frozen
black eyed peas and cover them with water. Season with the salt, the pepper and the sugar. Cook on medium-low until they are done.

Canned black eyed peas are the quickest way to cook them and
they are usually well seasoned with added bacon. Although, the
home cook might add two slices of cooked bacon and lightly season
them.

Cooking since the age of fifteen, the author has always enjoyed
enjoyed cooking holiday meals.